Reflections in the lay mirrors

Thomas Noble describes the Carolingian lay noble ethos as ‘remarkably simple’, and some discussions have sought to boil it down to one or two essential concepts. Mayke de Jong, for example, stresses fides (loyalty to one’s lord) as a key virtue of elite society, while Eric Goldberg has argued that ‘Dignitas was at the heart of Carolingian political culture.’ Yet closer analysis of specific genres of moral texts has often revealed their variety. It is no coincidence that neither Hans Hubert Anton’s study of mirrors for princes, nor Franz Sedlmeier’s analysis of lay mirrors, ends with extensive conclusions: it has proved remarkably difficult to find core themes in these genres.

There is a very different flavour to each of the four lay mirrors discussed in this book. Paulinus’ repeated yet unfocused worries about ‘worldliness’ in Liber exhortationis seem to reflect both the specific date of his writing, and also difficulties in adapting monastic texts to produce a lay ethos. Alcuin, in contrast, seems to have found moral writing for lay audiences relatively easy, perhaps because of his constant resort to banalities. De virtutibus et vitiis, in particular, seems to me to assume an audience less of ‘spiritual athletes’ than ‘spiritual couch-potatoes’, which may explain its popularity. Certainly a moralist who can claim: ‘We can be martyrs without sword or flames if we truly preserve patience in the soul with our neighbours’ is not making excessive demands for holiness on his audience.